With the girls in a wonderful early-bedtime, deep-sleep groove, my evenings have become radically more open to doing something besides dealing with the awful bedtime routines of last spring and summer. (May they be gone forever, and may I forget them soon.) I can now go off and do stuff without guilt (or a penumbra of ire and exhaustion) at 7 p.m., which both makes life a lot more tolerable ad coincides nicely with the high season of activities at the colleges. Accordingly, I’m indulging, especially but not only in the evenings. Over the last month, I’ve seen one rock show at Olaf and one at Carleton, done some figure drawing at Carleton’s open modeling sessions, seen art exhibits at both Olaf and Carleton, and attended the opening artist talks of a new exhibit at Carleton’s art gallery. Over the next month, I’ll hopefully draw at more of the modeling sessions, see another concert (at Carleton this time), squeeze in some runs in the dark autumnal Arb, and try my legs at a cyclocross race at Olaf. Northfield is a good place to be right now, figuratively and literally.